The rise of the niche website

Recent OPA stats on the fastest growing SA websites of 2008 in SA illustrate a strong demand for niche websites.

The top 10 as published on MyBroadband are as follows:

1 - Sunday World (187% growth)2 - Dispatch (181%)3 - RealEstateWeb (91%)4 - Sowetan (79%)5 - The Herald (77%)6 - Yellow Pages (71%)7 - Food24 (68%)8 - MoneyWeb (50%)9 - Landbou (48%)10 - SuperSport (45%)

You can read the full story on the stats at MyBroadband: http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Internet/6650.html

1. Dispatch, the Herald, and The Sowetan are regional papers. I think we can take their rise to indicate a need for more targeted content. It may in part be a matter of brand loyalty from the related papers, but I think that these sites may also offer the kind of local, targeted news that people can’t get on News24 or IOL.

Regional and community newspapers should recognize that there is a strong appetite for their content online. And with some social networking thrown in and an active attempt to get local advertisers on board, I think community/regional websites can do very well.

2. Landbou, MoneyWeb, Food24, and so on all illustrate that focusing on a niche can work very well. Landbou is probably the best example of this – both a niche in terms of subject matter and language. And as we know, a site like Landbou can offer highly targeted advertising space, something that should make up for the relative lack of user numbers.

We have of course already seen this kind of niche success with MyBroadband – which has grown phenomenally over the last few years. Still, the feeling that I get from most of the major publishers is that they are reluctant to back niche websites.

A good example is sport. Sport24 is still very new, and SuperSport still has the air of being a sidekick to the SuperSport tv channels. How we don’t have a massively dominant player in this market by now is remarkable in a sport-obsessed country like South Africa.

3. It is also worth noting that most of the sites on the list are content-driven. I think the importance of quality and relevant content is constantly being overlooked in favour of whatever the latest buzzword happened to be.

And finally:
- Note that most of the sites on the list are growing from a small base – typically 20 000 unique users to 40 000. In other words, these growth rates are obviously not sustainable.
- Avusa has four sites in the top 10 – more signs that their investments are paying off. Competition for Media24 is certainly on the way.